Davide Serra used to play semi-professional volleyball in Italy’s Serie A2, or second division. He is tall and slim and was a setter – the player whose task, like a quarterback’s in American football, is to dictate the shape of the game, and whose talent is not brute force but vision.
Serra was born in Genoa but has lived in Britain for the past 12 years. In London, he plays setter in the financial world, as a hedge-fund manager. Together with Eric Halet, his French business partner, he runs Algebris Investments from an office near Savile Row. The fund has so far invested about $2.5bn, mostly in the shares of financial companies.
